Android Make Build System

For a list of behavioral changes useful for Android.mk writers see Changes.md

For an outdated reference on Android.mk files, see build-system.html. Our Android.mk files look similar, but are entirely different from the Android.mk files used by the NDK build system. When searching for documentation elsewhere, ensure that it is for the platform build system -- most are not.

This Makefile-based system is in the process of being replaced with Soong, a new build system written in Go. During the transition, all of these makefiles are read by Kati, and generate a ninja file instead of being executed directly. That's combined with a ninja file read by Soong so that the build graph of the two systems can be combined and run as one.